


Breaking Broken

by DisguisedasInnocent



Category: Glee
Genre: Child Abuse, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, One Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisguisedasInnocent/pseuds/DisguisedasInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cracks begin to show, fine lines that she had never seen before, and she wonders when she missed the signs. She doesn't believe that the prayers will be enough any more. Warning(s): Non-specific abuse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Not my usual format at all, a little bit rough around the edges due to not having a Beta and writing this in one go on my 750words. However, I felt that the roughness worked for the piece, and decided that I would post it up here. Read, enjoy and review if you can! Comments on writing style/improvements are always appreciated. (Also posted on FF.net).

You look at her and you wonder, staring hard at her body, taking in the fine lines that you have never seen before, just how you could have missed the change. Now, staring at the firm lines of muscle underneath the blonde haired girl's flesh, you can see the damage. The brokenness of her soul hidden behind the firmness of her body. The darkness in her eyes hidden by the lightness of her smile. You can see the truth shining through the false. Hidden away from eyes that never looked beneath the surface, and you wonder, just when she became able to lie to you, because you've missed this change for years.

Looking back into your memories, digging the information out of the darkness, bringing it to the light you can see the time that she began to change. The Cheerleading Camps that formed her into the woman that you see now in front of you, the one that is not the beautiful blonde haired girl that you met in the middle of a playground and laughed with. You can see that she's being moulded into something different. Something that you never would have expected that she could become. Something that she shouldn't have been able to become.

You look into her hazel eyes, green and gold mixed into a hazy sphere of emotion that you once were able to decode without a challenge. Now you look into those eyes and wonder when the wall was erected to keep you out. You wonder what the moment was, the minute, when she locked you out and you pray that you can break through again, because you can see it. The faults at the corners of her eyes, the heartbreak threatening at every moment to break, and it hurts your heart to see it.

Not many would expect you of all people to care for the state of her heart, but you do, you care. You care more now that you were ever willing to admit before, because your heart aches at the sight of her body, her broken shell of a body that used to house such a beautiful soul but now you aren't sure that soul is there any more. You hope, you hope that it is merely hiding, battered and broken, but able to be fixed. At night, you sit at the end of your bed, staring at a picture of the girl on your bedside table and you pray to a god that you didn't think you believed in any more to make sure that she makes it through the night. 

You offer your bed to her, endlessly, praying that one day she'll take you up on the offer. That she will smile at you and tell you that she'll see you at your car after school. She doesn't.

You see her climb into her little Mini, hunch her shoulders as she places her bag in the back seats and sit for a moment purely breathing. Endlessly breathing. You stare at that little car, watching as she puts it into gear before sliding out of the car park, the world flowing around her, but she doesn't not flow with the world. You sit, and you stare, and then you begin to pray. You pray and you hope, and then the next morning you look for that car in the crowded parking lot and fell as if you can't breathe until you see that car, parked in the corner, silent and still and you know, you know, that she made it to school for another day. That she's still alive for another day, and the cycle repeats itself. Endlessly.

Until it doesn't.

One day, the cycle ends. 

You don't see her car sat in the parking lot in the morning. You don't see her blonde hair flowing through the hallways as she makes her way around the school for class. You don't see her at first period, and then you know. You know that the pounding in your chest is your heart racing a mile a minute and you know that you are going to have to force yourself to breathe in a minute before you black out. 

Your phone rings, your eyes look down at the screen, an unfamiliar number. Your thumb shakes as you take the phone and answer the call.

"Miss Lopez?" The voice on the other side of the phone says quietly and you swallow hard before you are able to reply. "I'm calling from Lima Memorial, a Miss Lucy Fabray has been brought in to us, and you are listed as her emergency contact. If it is possible, would you be able to make it to the hospital as soon as possible please?"

The lump in your throat grows but you say yes and click off the call.

Your world crashes. Darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking is easy. It is fast. But how do you know if you are breaking, or if you are broken?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At first, I didn't intend for this to have any second chapter, or a continuation of any kind. However, it kept eating away at me and during another 750words session this came out. It is rough and again in a tense that I don't normally write in. Enjoy.

You sit in your car for a minute after you manage to stumble your way to the car. Your eyes are blind even as you stare out of the windscreen into the car park, searching for the small mini car you know isn't amongst the cars, because to see it would make the weight pressing down on your chest disappear. It takes you five minutes to learn to breathe again, to force your lungs to draw air in and out of your chest again, the pain lessens but it continues to thrum through your system regardless. Dark eyes close as you struggle to press back against the overwhelming need to curl up in ball on your backseat and cry. She needs you.

She's always needed you.

You know you want to cry because you haven't been there for her. You want to shout and beg for forgiveness. You want to hurt yourself like you hurt her but something stops you, her voice inside your head, her words reverberating through your mind. They remind you that she cares for you that she would stand by your side as you didn't stand by her side when she needed you.

The car starts with a roar, you want desperately to be able to shove the feeling away, you want to be able to breathe easily for a minute. You want to be back in the classroom, your head balanced on the palm of your hand as you try to feign indifference to the Maths lesson in front of you when you are really intrigued by the way that the numbers are never wrong. In the past, you likened yourself to an equation, a sum of parts that made a whole, but now you know that you were wrong at the time. You understand that you got the equation wrong, because she's a part of it. She's the biggest part that makes up who you are and you know, you know that you need her in your life to be all right with the things that you've done.

She's always been the one that made you whole. That held your hand when you needed her to be the comforting force in your life. You know that you didn't hold her hand, that you pushed her away as you placed all your needs upon Brittany. You know that she needed you to hold her head above water; you remember the way that she looked at you as if she were drowning. As if she had forgotten how to thread water and she needed you there to teach her.

Driving along the road, you promise yourself that you will not let her drown. You look at the people walking on the streets, the ones that will not be affected by whether she is all right or if she is broken and you wish, you wish that they could see that they understood the darkness that consumed you now. You wish that you could make the people understand the way that she has been forced to live.

"I'm Santana," You say to the receptionist at the hospital, nails digging into your palms as you struggle not to break down. Being there, seeing the people, hearing the words. They were things that broke your heart, your body trembling as you struggled to understand. "I'm here for Lucy Fabray."

"Of course," The receptionist murmured, typing quickly looking up the file. You watch her eyes scan over the words for a moment, information flowing from the screen into her eyes and you feel your throat tighten. You need to know, but the knowledge might break you. Why didn't you see it before?

"How is she?" You manage to force the words out, you don't understand them, and they sound foreign on your own lips. "Is she... all right?"

"I'm sorry Miss, I don't have that information. She's on floor three, room three hundred and eight. I believe that you will find more information there." The receptionist commented, pointing you towards the elevator and you stand for a moment, a minute, wondering if you can remember the way to swim.


	3. Promises Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's in a bed, a hospital bed, and there's nothing you can do to change that. But it hurts just the same.

You don't want to be there.

You decided that the moment that you stepped into Quinn's hospital room. Your hands shook on the door handle, trembling as you struggled to control the thundering pace of your heart. You decided it the moment that you collapsed down into the chair beside at her bedside, your hands reaching out to touch her skin, to trace the edges of the bandages tied around her wrists the rest of her body covered by the blankets. Your chest wheezed, your lungs desperate for oxygen but unwilling to inflate in the face of your sadness. You decided then that you didn't want to be there because you didn't want Quinn to be there.

You know what you wanted. You wanted her at your home. You wanted her covered in your blankets. You wanted your limbs tangled between her arms and her legs as you lay together in your bed, your breathing peaceful, your bodies intertwined. You wanted her in your arms, her head resting against your chest, her ear rested over the flesh covering your heart as she listened to the pulsing, throbbing beat that it played solely for her. You wanted to curl your body through her body, your lips pressed against the crown of her head as you shared the same space and time. You wanted her to be alive. You wanted her to be whole and perfect. You wanted her to be happy.

You didn’t want her to be lying in a hospital bed, her arms wrapped with white bandages, strapped around her flesh to hold her body together. You didn’t want there to be a pink stain growing on the bandage that covered her wrist, a growing, widening stain that stole the breath from your lungs and forced your heart to throb with a strange mixture of agony and thankfulness. It proved that she had lived, but that she could die.

“Are you Miss Lopez?” 

You didn’t hear the door opening, but you suppose that shouldn’t have been a surprise. You didn’t hear anything but the beeping beat of Quinn’s heart monitor. Your ears concentrated on the pace and rhythm of the beeping pulse, the sound assuring you that she had lived. You didn’t want to take your eyes off her body, your ears off the monitors or your hands away from her hand. You wanted to check every inch that you could access to know the state of her flesh, to search through her eyes for the state of her emotions and to pick through her thoughts for the state of her mind. 

“Santana,” You say your own name slowly, your lips curling around the shape of the letters, remembering the way that those sounds sent shivers down your spine when Queen spoke them. “I’m just Santana.” 

“All right,” The man’s words are stilted, filled with confusion and a slight amount of wonder, but you do not turn your head to look into his eyes. You do not want to take your eyes off Quinn’s body, not when you’ve just come to understand there is so much left of it that you have to memorise. You imagine that his eyebrows have furrowed, a line appearing on his skin between the brows, but you don’t take the time to check. Your eyes fixate on Quinn’s body, on the rise and fall of her chest, and you cannot allow yourself to break contact. “Lucy was brought in last night, in the early hours of the evening, with some quite extensive wounds all of which appear to be self-inflicted. At the time, her mother brought her into the hospital, but since the end of visiting hours last night we have been unable to contact Mrs Fabray, so we contacted you, as the emergency contact. I trust that was appropriate?”

“Yes.” You answer but your throat constricts around any other words that you might have offered the man, your mind fixated on a pair of words. “The wounds… they were self-inflicted?”

“We believe that this was a suicide attempt, judging from the numerous wounds and their depths.” You watch from the corner of your eye as the man moves around the bed, the desire to scream, shout, and cry buried beneath the need to protect Quinn. “Is there anything that could explain this? It could be a change in Lucy’s life, perhaps a break up, something that could explain this?”

You say her name as if it belonged to a queen, allowing it to fill your mouth before sliding free into the air, drifting into your ears. “Quinn, she’s called Quinn.”

“Has anything changed in Quinn’s life recently?” The doctor tries again, battling past the confusion in your mind, the desire to wrap your body around Quinn’s slight frame, to offer her everything that you are without question. 

“At home,” You answer, because there isn’t anything else to say. “I think she’s being abused at home.” You lift your eyes from the bed, from Quinn’s broken and battered body, to meet the man’s eyes, unwavering in your conviction. You didn’t want to believe the lines that covered Quinn’s arms, or the bruises that appeared on the soft white flesh of her back, or the hollowness of her eyes. Yet, now, seeing the aftermath you believed. You just wished that you didn’t have to. “She’s scared all the time now.”

“Scared?” The doctor’s voice changed, darkening and deepening as he stood by the end of Quinn’s bed, his hands fiddling with the medical report pinned to the bed. “What do you mean?”

“Crying in her car after school,” You answer, your eyes glazing over as you think about the time when you watched her, your hands clenching at your sides in anger. You should have gone to her, made her talk to you, instead of allowing her to drift further and further away. You never made the right decisions when it came to Quinn, always too close or too far and never at the right time. “I never asked why.”

You try not to look into the doctor’s eyes; you don’t want to see the judgemental shine that they take on, or the sadness that fills the deep blue orbs. “Why do you think that means she’s being abused at home? I need you to understand that this is a serious allegation Miss Lopez, I need you to sure.”

“She’s smaller than she’s ever been before.” You murmur, picturing her body in your eyes, the map of a world that you explored endlessly inside your head. “Lighter than I’ve ever seen her before and thinner, you can count her ribs easily; I saw them when we changed for cheerleading. She avoids people’s eyes and she won’t let anyone touch her, flinching away from everyone, from me.” You try to disguise the way that your voice hitches as you speak, but you know by the sharp intake of breath and the puff of air that the man releases that you did not manage it. “She doesn’t speak; she doesn’t do anything outside of school, always running home. She just isn’t Quinn anymore.”

You can see the wheels turning within the man’s eyes as he nods, sighing and running his hands down his thighs. “Thank you Santana, I’ll check to see what can be done, but thank you.” He pauses by the doorway. “She’s strong, but she can’t get through this on her own.”

“I know.” You murmur, feeling the word inside your body, inside your heart as you vow to yourself that you will never let her be on her own again. “I know.”


	4. The Cracks in Her Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wakes up and you feel as if you've been punched in the gut, but you promise to be there regardless.

You're there when she opens her eyes. Holding her hand, your fingers pressed into her palm, cold and clammy as you struggle to control the racing pulse of your heart. You want to cry, your eyes are watering, peering into her darkened hazel orbs. You can see the mess of grey and green, shots of brown and gold piercing the forest of green, giving rise to a picture of beauty that takes your breath away ever time that you look into those piercing eyes. You decided the first time you looked at her properly, at age eight on the playground over the sandpit that you didn't ever want to look away. You tried not to lose her gaze for the rest of the play session, mesmerised by her eyes, and you still remember the way that her cheeks blushed a pale pink and she ducked down to try to avoid your gaze.

This time she doesn't blush.

She doesn't look away either though, and you take that as a gift because it means that she doesn't want you to leave. You look into her eyes, desperate to see underneath the layer of pain that covered them, your heart aching as you tried to see deeper. 

"Santana," Your name sounds foreign on her lips, a sigh and a whimper at the same time, her eyes flickering away from you. You want to place your hand underneath her chin, to force her eyes back onto your face, so that you can see that she's all right. "I didn't..."

"I'll always be here." You tell her softly, tightening the whole that you have on her hand, squeezing it gently as you attempt to get her to look into your eyes. "You don't have to hide from me Quinn, I want to help you."

"You can't help me." Her voice is small, broken, and she doesn't look at you when she speaks.

You can feel your heart breaking, shattering and cracking even as you attempt to force it back into one piece. You feel as if you've been punched in the gut by her words. You want nothing more than to take her into your arms and whole her as if you were a barrier that would protect her from the outside world. You want her to feel protected and loved. "I'm here." You whisper, your voice hitching as you struggle to speak. "I'll always be right here Quinn, you've just got to let me be here."

"Where were you?" She asks you and then you know that this is what heartbreak feels like. Heartbreak is a hot spear through your chest, piercing your body and sliding through your gut. A hand reaching into your chest to squeeze your heart tightly and press down on your lungs until you can't take a breath in. Heartbreak feels like a constant churning in your stomach that you cannot avoid or prevent. It is pain.

"I don't know." You answer because there is nothing else to say. "But I'm here now. I'm here. I promise. I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be right here throughout this Quinn, because I love you."

"My father said that too." Quinn murmurs, closing her eyes as she wraps her free arm around her stomach and curls into a ball on the bed. You take note that she doesn't pull her hand away from your hand, allowing it to remain in your clutches. "He said that it wouldn't hurt."

"Quinn," You whimper her name in sadness and anger. Anger because you hadn't been there to protect the girl. Anger that she hadn't felt that she could come to you. Anger because her father believed that he could get away with hurting his own daughter. "I told them."

"What did you say?" She asks softly, her eyes flickering towards you, soft hazel orbs hardening. "What did you tell them?"

"I..." The words caught in your throat, burning as you try to swallow past the pain. "I told them about your father, I told them about the way that you'd been crying in your car. I told them about the bruises."

"You shouldn't have told them anything." Her voice is flat, hurt filled and angry but her eyes are grateful. "It wasn't your place."

You shake your head, lifting her hand to your face and cradling it against your jawline as you nuzzle the bandages covering her wrists. "It is my place to protect you Quinn, I might have been doing a shitty job of it recently, but I promise, I promise I'll get better. I will."

"You don't need to be better." She murmurs quietly, her voice soft and gentle. "You need to be there."

"I'll be right here." You answer confidently. "I'll never leave your side. You're not getting rid of me Quinn."

For the first time, looking into her eyes, you feel hopeful instead of sad. You feel bright instead of dark, but you can see the brokenness hiding within her eyes and you don't know how long it will last.


End file.
